This is indeed a frightening scenario and it is even more frightening because the, alleged, scientific intelligentsia is making the proposal-—not some group of bloodthirsty world class terrorists.
To begin with, the 90% number seems awfully high. I wonder who was responsible for this figure and just how they arrived at their conclusion. (Not that I think this is correct thinking, by any stretch, but I'm curious about their methodology and assumptions.)
Not ironically, it is not a scientific conclusion, but a philosophical conclusion, with very old roots in socialist theory.
Before socialism, there was long a proto-socialism found in Europe that first emerged as a reaction to industrialism. It was characterized by its rejection of modernity and learning, and nostalgic love of primitivism. Its first great advocate was the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who imagined mankind returning to the Garden of Eden, or as he called it, “The State of Nature”. Leaving industrialization and civilization behind.
This heavily romanticized primitive peoples living “as one with nature”, in a completely natural setting, like animals. In turn, this led to rapt fascination in the primitive peoples of the world by those who read his works, invariably followed by disappointment when the lives of primitives were discovered to be neither simple nor pleasant, but were more as Thomas Hobbes described life in the State of Nature, as “Nasty, Brutish and short.”
But the intense desire to discard complexity, education, history, civilization, technology, etc., and to live as peasants in isolated villages, has continued unabated since, and is virtually unchanged in its modern advocates, like Dave Foreman, founder of Earth First!
It intertwines well with elitist-socialism, who have reached the conclusion that primitivism is actually hard work, so should be only for the, importantly, “9 in 10 people” who should be made to live in a primitive state. The elitist-socialist always assumes that they are of the “1 in 10” who are superior to everyone else. So they are the only ones who should be the masters.
This is where they get, after some philosophical evolution, the “90% of the world’s population should be destroyed” theory.
Some philosophical background to this crops up in interesting places, historically. For example, the American essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson proposed that mankind should live in isolated villages, far apart from each other (again, identical to Dave Foreman), and their leaders, or masters, should be itinerants, traveling from village to village.
The purpose of these masters is to insure that the villagers remain primitive. Preventing them from technological development and improving their lives. He called such people “Orphic Poets” (how about that for a squishy liberal self description). And they should be honored and feasted by the villagers for doing the hard work of being their masters.
The next really major advance in State of Nature proto-socialist theory in the US came around the time of the Civil War, in a book which was a passionate defense of slavery.
George Fitzhugh’s “Cannibals All: Or Slaves Without Masters”, proposed that slavery was not just good, but so good that “9 out of 10” people should be slaves. The book, of course, is written in such a way that the reader would assume that they would be one of the “1 in 10” who should be masters. An interesting, if disgusting, read.
So the only remaining question is how did elitist-socialist State of Nature philosophy turn homicidal? That is purely a product of the 20th Century and globalism.
It came with the realization that there are no primitive peoples left. No one untouched by civilization and technology. There is no hidden Garden of Eden left on Earth that needs to be discovered. No place to run to and hide and be primitive.
It turned the elitism of the elitist-socialists into downright megalomania. On one hand, they think of themselves as demigods, whose mastery now controls the entire world (think man-made global warming), yet on the other hand, in their minds it has reduced the “9 in 10” who are not elitist-socialists to being nothing but a plague and a pestilence that is destroying their (the masters) world.
So they look forward, passively or actively, to the wiping out of 90% of the people of the world. All these slaves have become the gigantic wall preventing the return to the State of Nature. Until they are killed, mankind cannot be returned to perfection, forced to forget the knowledge of good and evil, and be returned to Eden.
Ironically, the vast majority of elitist-socialists have no idea of the philosophical roots of their obsession. This means that there is some element in their physiology or character that they have in common. It is certainly not superiority. In many ways, their superiority complex is rooted in deep feelings of inferiority. Combined with intense hatred and fear of learning and technology.
For many, collectivism, “equality” to a herd-like extreme, is the means to their philosophical ends. This was the great 20th Century elitist-socialist experiment, that through collectivism, a return to communism would result.
This Hitler, Stalin, or Maoist theory of mass murder on an unprecedented scale, has the same philosophical origins as the applause of the “scientists” in Texas. Heaven help us if it has similar results.